Bruce Anderson (columnist)

Bruce Anderson (born 1949)[1] is a British political columnist, currently working as a freelancer. Formerly a political editor at The Spectator and contributor to the Daily Mail, he wrote for The Independent from 2003 to September 2010, and ConservativeHome until 2012.

Early life and education

Anderson was born in Orkney, and was educated at Campbell College, Belfast, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he read History.[1][2] He was a contemporary of the historian Paul Bew at both school and university.[3]

Politics

In his youth he was a Marxist, and it was as a member of the radical organization People's Democracy (alongside Bew) that he first became involved in the civil rights campaign in Northern Ireland. Anderson participated in the most "dramatic moment in the story of People's Democracy": a four-day 'freedom walk' from Belfast to Derry, which began on New Year's Day 1969. On 4 January he and his fellow marchers were attacked by approximately 200 loyalists at Burntollet Bridge, just outside Derry.[4]

He still often writes for The Spectator, where his contributions are distinguished by their unstinting support for Britain's former Prime Minister David Cameron. Following the outcome of the referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union in June 2016, Anderson commented that:

It is the sovereign people who have got everything catastrophically wrong. I would not be surprised if there is a surge in demand to recall David Cameron, in months rather than years. Not so much 'Come back, all is forgiven' as 'Come back, and forgive us.'[5]

Advocacy of torture

Bruce Anderson has been an advocate of torture in ticking time bomb scenarios, even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks brought the question to greater public prominence. In February 2010 he wrote a column for The Independent, arguing that the British government would have not just the right, but the duty, to torture if there was a ticking bomb, and that they should torture children if they believed that doing so would yield information that would avert a terrorist attack:

It came, in the form of a devilish intellectual challenge. "Let's take your hypothesis a bit further. We have captured a terrorist, but he is a hardened character. We cannot be certain that he will crack in time. We have also captured his wife and children". After much agonising, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one answer to Sydney's question. Torture the wife and children.[6]

References
  1. "Authors: Bruce Anderson". Hungarian Review. Retrieved 4 July 2019.
  2. "Classics, History and Law Triposes". The Times. 30 June 1970.
  3. Godson, Dean (21 February 2007). "A tribute to Ulster's A.J.P. Taylor". The Spectator. Retrieved 4 July 2019.
  4. Dean Godson, Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal of Unionism (London: Harper Collins, 2004), p. 311
  5. The Brexiteers will want David Cameron back soon enough, The Spectator, 2 July 2016
  6. Bruce Anderson "We not only have a right to use torture. We have a duty", The Independent, 16 February 2010
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